


Time’s Up

by HiroMyStory



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood, CPR, Episode: s04e05 Expire Erect, F/M, No. 10: They Look So Pretty When They Bleed, Oneshot, Scene Rewrite, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:00:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27536425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiroMyStory/pseuds/HiroMyStory
Summary: Lucifer is dying. Chloe will do anything to save him.
Comments: 28
Kudos: 155
Collections: LuciferBingo





	Time’s Up

**Author's Note:**

> A re-imagining of the scene after Lucifer is shot in Expire Erect. Belated Whumptober 2020 entry. Also fills "Whump" on my LuciferBingo card. Thank you to [ Miah_Arthur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miah_Arthur/pseuds/Miah_Arthur) and [ObliObla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla) for the beta read!

Chloe loosens Lucifer’s collar. His eyes roll toward her, and his lips pull up. She sees a joke on the tip of his tongue and lets out a little hysterical laugh before he can deliver it.

“Press harder,” she tells Eve.

The rag Eve’s holding to his stomach is already turning red.

Chloe makes him vulnerable. She knows it, even if she doesn’t know why. She’s seen him heal quickly—a hole in his hand healed enough for him to try to play piano a few hours later—but she doesn’t know what happens if she stays near. Besides, what’s fast enough when he’s bleeding out from an abdominal wound?

Her fingers move from his collar to his neck to feel his pulse: thready and rapid.

“Ladies,” he jokes. “I had a dream like this. Much less painful though.”

The look Eve throws Chloe speaks of sheer desperation. “He’s the Devil. He's going to be okay, right?”

Nodding with a tight smile, Chloe tells her: “He's going to be fine. Just keep up the pressure.”

Marco is pacing, running his hands through his hair, and muttering to himself. She’s tried reasoning with him, but he’s intractable.

Dan knows what’s happening. Rescue will be coming. But Lucifer is pale and clammy. His pupils are dilated, and he seems to be having trouble tracking the situation as his gaze rolls from her to Eve to Marco and back. Strangely enough, he’s smiling. A dopey sort of grin.

“Detective, when I said I needed closure, I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so closed.”

Her stomach plummets, and for a second it’s _her_ heart that’s not beating right. “Don’t say that,” she says. “You’re going to be fine. Dan will get here soon, and we’ll get you the help you need.”

He smiles at her, a smile that is tenderness and pity and “you silly human” all rolled into one.

“Detective,” Eve says, her voice tight and rising. She nods toward the now soaking cloth. “What can I do?”

Chloe’s seen enough to recognize someone on the edge of panic. Easing her hands under Eve’s to take over keep pressure, she says, “See if you can get fresh cloths from the bar.” They won’t help much, but something to do is what Eve needs.

“I can do that.” Her dark curls bob with her emphatic nod.

“And a drink, if it isn’t too much trouble,” Lucifer croaks out.

“Yes, of course, Lucifer.” Eve glances at Marco, who tilts his head, and she bounds for the bar.

Lucifer looks from the bloody mess under Chloe’s hands up to her eyes, and his focus sharpens. “Detective, Chloe, I meant what I said earlier. It was a good partnership. This—this was just hellishly bad luck.”

“I won’t let you die,” Chloe tells him. It’s an echo of the day after they met, when she was shot and he saved her. “You’re going to be fine. And before you know it, I’m going to be dragging you back into another case.”

“Promises, promises.” He grins, but she sees his teeth are red.

Eve kneels back beside them with an armful of bar towels and a bottle of Cîroc. She pours the vodka into a glass before relieving Chloe with a fresh towel.

Drinking is a terrible idea right now, but Chloe doesn’t tell him no. Instead, she watches hypnotized as his throat bobs with his first gulp. He chokes, and the blood he coughs up swirls in the clear liquid.

There’s no time. It hits her hard enough to steal her breath. Marco is even more frantic, his pacing in a tighter circuit. Three steps, turn. Three steps, turn. Maybe she can rush him, wrestle the detonator away before he can depress it. But there are at least three dozen people in the club—including Ella passed out on a banquette—and it would be wrong to risk all their lives. Still, she inches into a crouch.

Fingers wrap in her sleeve, and she jumps. Lucifer barely has a hold—she’s not sure where he found the strength to lift his arm—but he’s there. He shakes his head when she meets his eyes.

Her eyes are burning when she shakes her head back. She’s not denying him; she’s denying everything that’s happening.

She can see that his breathing is slowing, that his eyes are losing focus. He’s going to lose consciousness soon, and at the rate he’s bleeding, she knows he doesn’t have much time beyond that. Eve is frantically changing the towels, focused on her task. And Lucifer, Lucifer’s staring at Chloe, not Eve.

 _Please_ , she thinks. _Please. I know I didn’t believe in you before a few weeks ago. I don’t even know if you can hear me. But if you’re up there, please save your son. Give me a chance to fix things. I’ll do anything. Whatever you ask. Just please._

Chloe’s still staring into the endless dark of Lucifer’s eyes. For a second, she hopes. She doesn’t understand this celestial stuff. Miracles are possible, right? And the alternative is _impossible_. A part of her doesn’t believe he can really die. He’s the Devil, yes, but he’s also her Lucifer, larger than life, and she’s only just realized how much she _needs_ him in hers.

Nothing happens.

Of course, nothing happens.

How foolish she is.

Lucifer sighs, and his lashes flutter. Chloe holds her breath. The unbearable pain in her chest isn’t going to let her breathe anyway. She wills him to keep looking at her with all her heart, but he seems to lose the fight as his eyes fall closed. His chest still rises, but his fingers slip from her sleeve.

“Lucifer?” she breathes.

Eve notices, too, letting go of the towel with one hand to pat his face, leaving bloody finger marks as she cradles his cheek. “Luce. Luce!” Her voice rises in panic.

Marco stops his pacing and turns to them. “Quiet!”

But Eve’s frantic calling doesn’t end, and he takes three quick, long steps until he’s looming over them.

“I said _stop_!” He draws his gun hand back. He's going to hit Eve. The gun’s swinging down—

Chloe chokes out a warning, and Eve twists. Marco’s blow misses its target. He tips forward, off balance, crashing into Eve’s shoulder. The detonator. He could hit it in his fall. Chloe lunges. Time slows the way it does when adrenaline is pounding, and Chloe is wrapping her fingers around his. Pulling the trigger from his slack grasp.

The shock of relief when they aren’t blown to bits is a cold shudder up Chloe’s spine. He still has his gun, though.

Chloe slides the detonator across the floor, as far away as she can, before she tackles Marco. They grapple on the floor. He’s much stronger than her, but she’s fueled by desperation and grief. It’s going on too long, though, and she’s losing her edge. Then Marco grunts, whines, curls in on himself, and Chloe bats his gun away. She whips her head around.

Eve is standing over them, biting her lip with a manic smile. She’s kicked Marco in the balls.

“Good job,” Chloe acknowledges, before hauling out her handcuffs. She needs to find one of the phones Marco collected, get the help Lucifer needs—

“Detective!”

Eve’s panic cuts through her thoughts. Chloe looks to where she’d hovering over Lucifer, not touching him. His head has slumped forward, and he looks terribly still.

 _No. No, no no no_. The word echoes in Chloe’s head as she finishes securing Marco, as she crawls back to Lucifer’s side, as she presses her fingers to his neck, searching for but not finding a pulse. “Help me lay him down,” she says, already starting to tilt him toward her.

He’s deadweight— _god_ , she hates that term—in her arms. It’s a struggle not to let him fall. Eve helps pull his legs straight, and together they maneuver him onto his back.

“Find a phone,” she commands Eve. “Call for help.” It’s probably not necessary. People are streaming out of the club, screaming, now, but Eve scrambles up.

Chloe tilts Lucifer’s head back and checks for breathing. Finding none, she starts compressions, Focuses on the count. Still, her vision is blurry and ‘sixteen’ comes out on a sob.

Then a paramedic is across from her, asking for Lucifer’s status. She keeps up compression while she tells him it’s the first round. He lets her finish the count as he opens the AED kit.

Just as she breathes “thirty” a second paramedic is pulling her away.

She falls back, sitting on her butt on the marble floor, watching. One paramedic gives him breaths, while the other tears his shirts and attaches the pads to his chest. The artificially-calm mechanical voice of the AED begins announcing instructions.

Chloe is cold but sweating as she listens to the machine charge.

Lucifer’s body jerks with the first shock, then flops back and doesn’t move. Chloe holds her breath. The AED drones on with instructions. It doesn’t detect a proper rhythm.

“Start CPR,” the AED announces, and the paramedics begin another round of compressions.

The next two minutes are an eternity and a blink. Chloe, dizzy, forces herself to breathe, to not count along with the compressions. She hears something crack and a paramedic curse. Probably one of his ribs. Then the machine is advising another shock, charging again, and Lucifer twitches under the second jolt. Her own heart thuds while she waits for the machine, but it instructs CPR again. It goes on and on, and Chloe’s hope is skittering away.

 _Please_ , she thinks again. At Lucifer. At the paramedics. At the universe.

Then—Lucifer’s choking, his fingers twitching. He’s breathing. The paramedics turn him on his side, tilting his head, and his eyes meet hers. Her own sudden sob is all she hears.

Yet another paramedic has wheeled in a gurney while Chloe wasn’t paying attention. They lower it to the floor before gently lifting Lucifer onto it. He watches her the whole time. Then, the gurney is being raised, and he’s being rolled out. Someone’s folding a foil blanket over her even though she’s uninjured.

Some amount of time passes, and Dan is talking to her.

Chloe comes back to herself.

“ —and it’s the craziest thing I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s saying a lot since I worked the case with Maze tonight,” Dan is saying. “I’ve never seen anyone recover that quickly. Not from resuscitation; not from that kind of blood loss. It’s not possible. The damn bastard is gabbing away and flirting with paramedics like nothing happened. Why should he have all the luck? When other people—”

Chloe turns away, not interested in Dan’s bitterness when all she feels is the joy of relief. Lucifer’s celestial healing must have kicked in. Maybe when he got outside. They hadn’t talked about how his vulnerability worked—well, she hadn’t asked and then they had their fight. She’ll fix that now, because—

He’s okay.

He’s going to be okay.

She runs outside, babbles apologies to Lucifer, promises she understands what he’s feeling, will respect his wishes. Even though a part of her is saying _no, no, no_. He tells her he’s right where he’s supposed to be, and relief blossoms in her breast. The ambulance carts Lucifer away, and Chloe can’t feel anything but joy. Even if it is Eve at his side, an ‘excellent nurse.’ Somehow, everything has turned out all right.

Chloe wraps her arms around herself. The chaos of the scene is unabated, but it fades into the background. The rustle to her right doesn’t cause her to turn at first. But something is different in the air, and she tips her head.

A tall, red-headed man stands at her elbow, in her space. Too close for a stranger. She takes a step back, her mouth falling open.

“Chloe Decker?”

She nods, nervous. There’s something about this man.

“You made a deal with my Father for my brother’s life.” He waves in the direction of the departed ambulance.

Chloe nods again. Swallows.

“Time to pay up.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is just a whumptober ficlet. There isn’t a continuation or sequel in the works. I don’t even have an idea in mind what payment the mysterious angel is going to demand. If y’all have any fun ideas, feel free to share in the comments! (Still not writing it, though! Anyone’s welcome to the idea . . .)


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